Toe touch, pike, hurdler — cheer's big three. Athletes tend to think of them as three separate skills to be learned three separate times, which triples the workload and misses the most useful fact about them: they're one jump wearing three shapes.
Every one of them runs on the same engine. The set is identical — arm swing, deliberate sink, drive up on one rhythm. The landing is identical — feet together, knees soft, chest up, stuck. And the posture rule is identical and non-negotiable: the chest stays proud at the peak, and the legs rise to IT, never the other way around. Master those three shared pieces and you're most of the way to all three jumps at once. The only thing that changes at the top is where the legs go.
What each shape asks for
The toe touch sends both legs out wide to the sides — straight knees, toes reaching, thighs climbing toward hip height or above. Its signature demand is the straddle: hip flexibility to open the shape and hip-flexor strength to lift it. Its signature trap is the chest drop, because wide-and-high is the hardest lift of the three and the chest loves to dive down and "help."
The pike sends both legs together, straight out in FRONT. No straddle needed — but nowhere to hide, either: two legs lifted together directly in front of the body is the heaviest single lift in the jump family, and any knee bend is instantly visible against the clean parallel lines. The pike is the honesty test.
The hurdler splits the difference, literally: the front leg drives up straight while the back leg bends behind. Here's the thing every athlete should be told on day one — that asymmetry is the DESIGN, not a flaw. A hurdler isn't a toe touch that didn't finish; it's its own shape, judged on a straight, high front leg, a cleanly bent back leg and square, proud shoulders.
Which should you train? All three share so much that the real answer is: train the engine constantly and rotate the shapes. If you're prioritizing, the toe touch is the sport's centerpiece, the pike exposes and builds honest leg strength, and the hurdler often comes first chronologically because lifting one straight leg is an easier ask than lifting two.
One practical note for filming any of them: front-on shows the shapes best — straddle width, pike lines, front-leg height — and it's the view CoachVision reads to measure your leg lines, chest and arm timing across whichever jump you throw. Same engine, same scorecard.
The drill — Standing Kick Series
One drill feeds all three shapes, because all three are built from a straight leg driven high while the chest stays tall. One hand lightly on a wall: kick front, then to each corner, chest proud the whole time. The front kick is your pike and hurdler front leg; the corner kicks are your toe-touch straddle, one side at a time.
The rule that makes it count: if your chest dips to buy the kick height, the kick doesn't count. The rule in the air starts on the ground.
Do 10 kicks each direction, each leg. Then pick whichever jump you're working this month and watch the shared training show up in it — and in the other two, for free. Three jumps, one engine. Train accordingly.